Nothing in jersey is cheap
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They have that River Line train now between Trenton and Camden if you live along the river, with a connection to Patco in Camden, and you can catch the Atlantic City Train in Pennsauken. . Rutgers Camden is a train stop, but there is no way to get to the train station from the West aside from driving. Everything is oriented North South, until you get to Camden, then you can get to downtown Philly via Patco.
I apologize for missing this.
My daughter likes Stockton. If you had any questions I could ask her
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I have heard that. But playing a Fall sport puts you at an advantage where you are there a month early with 100 other kids. Also boys are just flat out easier, my son could fit in just about anywhere, aside from an Ivy or upper crust kind of place (heâd stick out as the âpoor kidâ).
He is a 6â6" 275lb kid that likes everything from powerlifting and heavy metal music to playing the bass guitar and Star Wars
My daughter really needed the right âfeelâ as she experienced much HS Drama and needed to make sure there were similarly minded people/clubs etc (which there were back when you could do a âreal open hosueâ)
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The other 59 is for in state college.
Saving several thousands a year is insignificant to you. Your choice.
There you have it. You want to allow your son to go to a school he will be âhappyâ at. Donât we all. Would you let him buy a new car he could not afford, because it made him happy? Probably not. I have a 27yo son and a 20 yo D. We chased merit for 27 yo and he got a full tuition scholarship at several schools. 20yo D plays Bball and wanted a high academic D3 school. She had stats to get merit at many schools, but because she had to apply ED1 to get on the team, we could not compare packages and got a lousy FA/merit package, but one we could afford. Unlike your situation, we were aware of the college cost before either kid applied so we knew the probably cost ahead of time. Both kids knew what we could afford before they applied. Nothing stinks worse than telling your kid, sorry I cannot afford to send you to XYZ University, their dream school. Nothing.
And as a parent of an athlete, I can tell you, student athletes often do not have time to work. Sure football is a fall sport, but they are working out year round and often are back at school mid summer to train for the upcoming season.
Whatever decision you make, make sure you can pay for all 4 years. No one wants to tell their kid going into year 3 they can no longer come up with the money. Best to you and your son.
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This is not true for all families. S20 knew from the beginning how much I could spend per year to send him to college. As the acceptances and FA offers arrived, I had little to no sense of discomfort as I told S20 which colleges were/werenât affordable. We both went into the process with the budget set more or less in stone.
Yes, there were a couple of universities that accepted him that, had they been affordable, he would have attended. Yes, he asked a few times if there was any way I could afford the COA for those schools. Yes, he ultimately accepted the financial reality that neither was affordable. Yes, he got over his longing in a relatively short period of time. Honestly, I would have been worried for his transition to adulthood if he could not accept such basic truths.
Financial realities shouldnât be deep dark shameful family secrets. Every family has a financial limit. To use your example @mamom , if a parent can tell a child
âNo, we cannot afford to buy you a Porsche for your 18th birthday,â should it not be just as easy to say, âNo, we cannot afford to pay $X/yr for your college education.â ?
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I agree, my daughter was disappointed, but realized her top choice was not an option. However, she ended up loving the school she went to, and later said she was glad we couldnât afford her first choice.
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My daughter was an athlete and she did not work during the school year until her final semester. She wishes she had worked earlier than that, both for the experience and the money. She loved the structure being an athlete provided, study tables, having to have projects done early because she had a game. Many of her teammates worked all 4 years, often getting a work study job in the athletic department. One who had worked at a grocery store all through high school continued working for that chain and also was a referee for youth and high school tournaments in their sport.
For my daughterâs final semester, she had her senior project, worked for a professor, was captain of her team, went to the NCAA tournament, and she had the flu twice (both strain A and B). Sometimes you just power through.
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What does seem to be painful for many parents and others to admit is that college choices are primarily limited by parental financial circumstances and choices, and that the studentâs own achievement / merit and interests matter only within parental financial constraints. Most of the messaging in K-12, particularly high school, is âdo well in school so that you can go to a âbetterâ college âŠâ, leaving out the part about â⊠if your parents can afford it.â
Perhaps it has to do with wanting to believe that everyone has good opportunities, even though opportunities are heavily based on family background. Of course, even if parents with money say that, they often do use money to purchase greater opportunities and remove barriers for their own kids. The kids still have to earn their achievements, but they will not be lacking for opportunities to do so, nor will they face barriers commonly standing in the way of those from lower SES families.
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Lol, just saying. Often, while those rich kids are out with their travel teams, having their SAT prep, paying for some enrichment, the lower SES kids are out there, doing. (Iâm referring to qualified kids, not just anyone who thinks they want college.)
It would have been interesting if weâd learned more about OPâs son than stats, football and career interests.
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@EconPop the problem is when there really is no affordable 4 year option.
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No affordable 4 year option within a two hour drive, with football, with the specific major and an unwillingness to consider other, related majors, outside of the NJ/PA corridor.
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@blossom there are plenty of other kids who are more flexible but still donât have good options. I know other students with similar stats and parents who canât or wonât contribute $15,000. They also may not be able to get halfway across the country. Actually, the OPâs son is lucky to have a dad contributing $$ and helping with research. Many of my daughterâs friends have no 4 year options.
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We end up getting a lot of those sorts of students at the university I work at.
And you know what? They make it work. Some of them attend half-time while working full-time. Some of them show up on the GI Bill after having done a tour of military service. Some of them cobble together money and scholarships from a wide variety of sources to be able to go for a couple semesters, then take a leave of absence for a semester or two while they pull together what they need to come back, and then make a bit more progress.
And yeah, a lot of them never manage to finish, and thatâs not good. But more of them ultimately manage to graduate than youâd think.
And itâs true that they donât get the idyllic four-year âcollege experienceâ that so many of us want for our kids. But they do get a degree.
So saying that there are no options? Nope, there are options. Some of them may be unpleasant or stressful or inefficient, sure, but there are options.
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oops (Posted here by accident. Can be deleted)
Good to know. I know there are other options, but weâre taking about a 4 year âexperienceâ here. Some of these kids need so much to get our of a bad home environment.
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Which is why I hope our country gets its act together so everyone can have better options, not just the wealthy. So many kids donât win the birth lottery - yet can do so much for the world/country if they had real opportunities. Some make it, others give up, pretty much all could have done better if theyâd had more help. Rich kids definitely have a leg up. (And rich doesnât have to be millionaire kids.)
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Agree with @ucbalumnus. Finances are the critical factor. I think one of the issues is that the thinking has not changed with the dramatic rise in college costs. Parents who went to college with financial aid and modest debt donât realize how significantly the landscape has changed until it is too late. Both parents working decent jobs are not eligible for need-based aid and the cost of even state schools is up dramatically. Merit money is drying up and is not available at âbetterâ colleges in an amount that makes it affordable. Parents who went to 4-year residential colleges generally want their kids to have that experience. And parents who were not able to do that, also want that experience for their kids.
Going to community college and then a university is tough. One statistic I found states that only about 17% of kids that start in CC end up with a bachelorâs degree within 6 years. Another that 25% go from CC to 4-year and of those about 60% get a degree. Thus, the vast majority of kids that go to CC do not get a bachelors degree. Of course for kids from lowest income levels, the graduation rates at 4-year colleges are not much better. There are very many kids that are not able to âmake it workâ. What is the graduation rate at your college @dfbdfb?